Digital maps of the world have gotten so comprehensive, complex, and accessible that it's easy to take marvels like Google Street View for granted. Leave it to these gorgeous, real-time ASCII renderings of Street View to remind you that holy crap it's incredible.

Coded by Peter Nitsch ASCII Street View plays on the ages old text art trope. Head over to the project's web interface, type in an address, and it'll render a zoomable Street View image in colored text. It's incredible on its own, but it gets better. Rather than remain frozen, the image wobbles and waves into a warped impressionistic version of itself. Nope, that swirling map is not going to help you get from place to place—a great reminder that Google did a great job assembling all that data into something that will. [ASCII Street View via Twitter]